


another eternity

by theflyjar



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, Character Turned Into Vampire, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Souled Vampire(s), Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theflyjar/pseuds/theflyjar
Summary: Upon his twenty-fifth birthday, after a dinner shared with his guardian, Yixing learnt of eternity.





	another eternity

Understanding eternity was an impossible task. Even when Yixing was young and belief in the occult was so very present and so very real for many. He didn’t know how far infinity expanded. No one did.

But, he came to understand.

Meeting Yifan, being with Yifan, loving Yifan, they were all infinites he could grasp and _feel_ inside. Every day edged them towards eternity, running around the world to chase each other until their bodies were tangled up.

The first place Yixing had been found was in a city Yixing didn’t know the name of, long before Yixing knew of eternity. A man had stumbled across Yixing, a scared little boy who’d been stowed away on a ship for reasons he hadn’t understood. Yixing had been nigh-on skeletal and swaying on his feet with dehydration.

The man had tended to him kindly, giving him water and soup to replenish him, tending to the dirt sores all over his body and ridding his hair of the lice that made his scalp scratch. He’d been so gentle for a monster who’d been prowling for food, to quench a thirst Yixing would grow to understand in years to come.

The man gave Yixing an ageing nursemaid, who cared for Yixing like the child he was, who seared herself to him in a motherly bond.

The man put Yixing back onto a boat, one of grandeur where Yixing would never go hungry or thirsty ever again. His nursemaid accompanying him, but his guardian remaining in the port. Yixing hadn’t understood the man who saved him but he had latched onto the tenderness he’d been shown. When the man would find Yixing again, in another city where Yixing couldn’t grasp the language nor the people, Yixing would plaster himself to the man’s side. He would fall asleep in carriages, cradled up by the man in his arms. He would wake to feasts of fruit and meats, fattening the flesh around Yixing’s bones. He would be dressed in clothes that felt softer than Yixing could imagine, always with a small vial of red around his neck.

As time moved on, Yixing felt a love for his mysterious guardian that he had never felt for his nursemaid. His nursemaid withered slowly with age, the drawn out wilting of a rose until her brain was struck with a deadly dull. She began to forget things. Forgetting her duties. Forgetting the day. Forgetting Yixing.

Yixing had found her lifeless and bloodless at the hands of his guardian, who cried tears of red whilst he stroked her cheeks. Yixing cried, too, comforted only by his guardian who vowed to give Yixing forever, if he should want it, and the reassurance that his nursemaid drifted away in a quiet tranquility at the hands of his guardian.

The love he felt for his guardian made him plead yes to eternity, not wanting to age until he forgot his guardian, like the nursemaid - the closest thing he had ever known to a parent - did with him.

Upon his twenty-fifth birthday, after a dinner shared with his guardian, Yixing learnt of eternity. His guardian’s mouth sheathed teeth sharper than any knife Yixing had ever seen and they broke through the skin on Yixing neck. He was laced with a euphoria until the fire spread.

He had clung to his guardian, begging for him to ease the pain. Until, suddenly, it stopped. Then the waves of exaltation returned and Yixing pressed his own teeth to the throat of his guardian, gulping down blood until it dizzied him.

He was happy, sated, and then kissed. His fingers in the hair of his guardian and soul quivering at the promise of the infinite the body of his guardian gave him.

From that day onwards, Yixing was granted the pleasure of knowing the name of his guardian, of being able to whisper _Yifan_ into the night and feel the gentle brush of lips against his throat.

Yixing had wanted to see the world and explore the realms unknown to him, but Yifan had seen everything he had wished to already. So, under the promise that Yifan should find him whenever separation became too much, Yixing travelled to far flung places.

Sometimes only days would pass before Yifan would appear, hungry for Yixing and love. Other times it was a century or two, Yifan coming as Yixing pined and lamented at the foot of mountains topped with snow.

Their letters, and later phone calls, emails and text messages, were constant, with Yixing spilling his love onto parchment for Yifan to read. And he received responses with delight, reading over and over again about how Yifan’s heart and soul belong to him, to Yixing.

The moment they could, they married. The rings they had held blood, straight from the heart of their lover, to keep them safe from the dangers of the world. Yixing’s vial still dangled around his neck, landing over where his heart beat and keeping part of Yifan’s lifeforce so close.

Soon, Yixing’s travels turned into a game of cat and mouse, with Yifan chasing him around the world as they drifted deeper into love with each other.

Yifan always found him within a day or two, always greeting Yixing with a kiss, always staying for a week longer than usual each time he found the younger man. They spent hours together, century upon century until it crept into millennia, just to be around one another. They danced together under the hot sun in Tangiers. They swam together in the deep oceans of the arctic cold. They laid in beds in almost every country, committing each other’s bodies to memory.

Between them, there was no one place that was home.

Until their chasing of one another led them to a discovery that had Yixing holding to Yifan again, like he did as a child, as they walked through a scene of destruction.

Yixing only let go when he heard a cry, one of help and heartbreak. He followed it with Yifan close behind him, stepping through broken parts of buildings and fighting the stench death always carried. They dug through the rubble quickly, unearthing the crying baby to hold him close between them. Yifan’s expression was solemn as he whispered to Yixing that he could hear no other heartbeats in the ruined town, his hands covering the baby’s ears. He was barely a year old, with dirt and blood covering his body and clothes, matting his hair into filthy chunks. In a state worse than when Yixing was found.

He knew what Yifan was implying, that they were the only ones around to care for the boy.

They returned to the city Yixing had been found in, where Yixing felt was most fitting for the boy to feel the ebbs of tenderness again. Yifan did not find someone else to look after the boy that time around, whispering to Yixing in the night that it was unintentionally cruel of him to give Yixing someone so fragile to love and think of as a parent. Yifan wished to give the boy parents who he could spend an eternity with.

Yifan didn’t dispute Yixing when he began to whisper, “Shixun,” to the baby at night, giving him a name. Yifan cooed the name at him, too, grinning happily when the baby smiled up at him.

It barely took a month for Yixing’s necklace vial of blood to be removed from his own neck, emptied, and then refilled with a mix of both Yifan’s and Yixing’s blood in equal measure. It was placed beside the crib they had bought until Shixun was old enough to wear it, keeping him safe from the terrors of the occult as he ran and played in the street with other children.

Yixing learnt to cook the foods all of Shixun’s friends ate, always taking sandwiches, iced lemonade and frozen yoghurt out for them to have when the sun became too hot during the day. Yifan preferred the evenings, when it wasn’t so bright, and that’s when he ran around after the children with Yixing, feeding them all whatever food he could put together in the kitchen. And, when the other parents emerged from their houses to call their children back inside before it became too dark, Yifan and Yixing would take Shixun for a walk.

The sun would be well below the horizon when they returned to their home, with Shixun fast asleep in the arms of whichever of his parents were carrying him. When he would be put to bed, Yifan and Yixing would quench their thirst together, having their own dinner much later at night. They would revolve around each other, kissing and touching what had grown so familiar, listening with joy to the little heartbeat that came from Shixun’s room.

When Shixun understood what his parents were and he could speak more easily, they began to travel again. Instead of hiding in obscurity from one another, Yifan and Yixing held hands with Shixun as they walked along beaches to splash the young boy’s feet in the water. They took Shixun to catch snowflakes on his tongue until he cried out for hot chocolate.

They took him anywhere he wanted to go, following their little human boy around the world. And Yixing knew they would until Shixun was old enough to learn about eternity, too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on twitter](https://twitter.com/yifantares)   
>  [ask me stuff on curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/yifan)


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